Latibule
by Zaedah
Summary: He clings to the last speck of bitter lust because there’s something to be said for routine


Many thanks to every pair of eyes gracing me with a visit. May your kindness be rewarded...

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**Latibule**

_(Featuring lyrics from 'You Found Me' by The Fray)_

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**Lost and insecure… You found me, you found me.**

He knows better than to expect privacy. Tucked inside a gender-specific room, he can predict the number of seconds that will pass before she invades. It has become a game in recent weeks; confrontations in the porcelain temple. The woman is a trained observer who relies on the skill to extend her lifespan and because she watches him, she'd have caught his rehearsed expression faltering. The message broke no new ground, beginning with 'son' and ending with all the reasons he isn't. Though mask number seventeen had been pulled from the internal bin, he's certain the rough edge of the smile could sand a boat. She'd have noticed the lapse.

The countdown in his head reaches single digits, then the numbers run out when she saunters in. He hadn't bolted the door in sympathy for the lock; a waste of a bullet. Her reflection is waiting and his doesn't bother to hide now. Knuckles white on the sink's ledge, his gaze falls to stubborn water drops defying gravity's shove into the abyss of piping. She's defiant too, pressing capable hands against the strained muscles of his back. And it's too much.

He wants to tell her. How wrong his father is, how false his bravado is, how much he wants and hurts and loves and bleeds. How his needs are too great for him to withstand much longer. But the words of a damaged man drip poison on disinterested listeners so he leaves her to scavenge for his muddled truth on her own. She'll never look hard enough, lacking the patience for minefields, but still she's here. That has to mean something. And when the knotted space between his shoulder blades receives her kiss, it does.

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**Lying on the floor… Surrounded, surrounded.**

The screaming wakes her just before the pain does. It's a raw tearing of a tender throat and when she cannot swallow, she realizes the sound escaped her possession. Dark clouds her wide eyes, tossing breathless stares around herself. But her body seems out of place and disorientation adds thunder to her storm. The nightmare's ending was abrupt and her hand, reaching into the black, finds nothing reassuring.

When forceful blinking finally brings surroundings into shaded focus, it's the bland hotel carpet staring back at her from point blank range. The chill of fear loosens its grip on her limbs but the floor is not as forgiving, bruising flesh in a replication of life. Tumbling sideways, her eyes fix on a dusty point beneath the bed. Monsters live there but they are less troublesome than the ones in her head.

A keycard is slid home, the beeping like an alarm rousing her more politely from slumber. A lamp is ignited and the dark is sent scurrying, exposing her position. Warm hands on her cold skin rub life back into a body the nightmare voices called dead. He's not supposed to be here, but that never stops him, appearing like a genie with wishes she won't use and yet does at every turn. She will not encourage his embrace, but when he drapes himself around her, she sleeps again.

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**Why'd you have to wait? Where were you, where were you?**

It's slow to dawn on him, but three coffees and a head slap before sunrise aren't always conducive to brilliance. Something's different, subtle despite the harsh lighting and when it finally registers, he wonders where she's been all his life. Because she's smiling. The face-brightening change isn't born of someone's misfortune or a well-timed joke; it's the runaway pencil. His to be exact, which shouldn't have merited the full array of teeth.

She's displaying a ready happiness that is both beautiful and mildly disturbing. The unnaturally giddy response to a trivial occurrence slowly makes him uncomfortable. The familiar face belongs to a stranger and it's possible she's obtained his coping mechanism through osmosis. However artificial it might be, the look is alluring and it nearly distracts him into forgetting his role. The calm seems eager to choke out every ounce of tension that parades as normalcy for them.

But he clings to the last speck of bitter lust because there's something to be said for routine. Snark always waits by the door and he clutches it now, aims and fires. And she is wounded. But not too injured to remain seated when he strides to the elevator, victory as venom eroding his tongue. They are sealed in a box that she grinds to a halt somewhere between the unforgiving earth and the heights he'd left on a hotel mattress with her. The slightest move makes this new person all too genuine beneath his hands and he can't remember why she waited so long to smile.

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**Just a little late… You found me, you found me.**

The language of her adopted country mocks every grammatical lesson she'd ever been taught by the flat end of a rod. This infantile nation shuns the sensibility of older civilizations, thinking it admirable to twist words into the incomprehensible. So many useless idioms, meaningless phrases and pop-culture references pepper daily conversation that she questions why his head hasn't exploded from the effort to contain it all. While few things have reaches cliché level in her limited experience, she's developing a taste for certain utterances that will never grow stale. The truth he now favors is the air in her lungs.

Lovers beneath a vibrant sunset is cliché royalty but they stand awash in the orange glow, convoluting the idyllic image with fingers wrapped around guns. A door splinters open under the force of his shoulder and they enter as one, cautious and daring and ever conscious of the other. Her hand closes around a knob, sweeps inside and declares the small space clear. But his is less so and the shot disturbs the romantic hour between dinner and entanglement. The strangled notes of her voice arrive at the scene before her body.

They tend to live in tardiness, letting the clock and the calendar and a thousand reminders move forward while they linger stubbornly behind. But lateness will steal nothing from her today. She finds him and time finally ceases altogether as they hover over the newly deceased. She tastes fear in his mouth but recognizes the flavor as her own. And though they fall away before discovery, they are close to clinging as the darkening sky promises a place to hide later. They'll take the offer because 'better late than never' is the only gamble they know.

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_Latibule – hiding place_


End file.
